Concerning Our King
by NeoKon
Summary: The Winter War is long over and summer approaches. All is peaceful - except on the inside...
1. 01 Beith: A Midsummer Night

_Joy health love and peace_

_Be all here in this place_

_By your leave we shall sing_

_Concerning our King_

Ichigo Kurosaki dreamed deeply that night.

He saw himself. He was walking down the familiar hallways of his school, clean and white, strangely silent. Students walked by him. He didn't recognize any of them. Silently moving their mouths.

He bobbed in the air behind himself. Staring at the white walls. Bare columns smoothed the corners. The windows were half-shuttered. He couldn't help but imagine beyond them, a wasteland of spirit sand. He tried to look into the classrooms with their warm, inane posters for comfort. They were all closed. No-one seemed to notice. Everyone seemed to be going somewhere, and yet, no-one seemed to be going anywhere.

He stared into the crowd. Only the crowd could distract him. But they didn't. The more attention he paid, the more he stared through them. As if they were hollow.

Then he recognized one. At the end of the hall, shifting in and out of the crowd. She didn't move; the motion around her created the illusion that she was moving. Deep red-brown hair tumbled around her face, over her shoulders, drifting almost down to her chest. The shine of a hair-clip – a very particular hair-clip – suddenly stabbing at him in a ray of light from somewhere he couldn't see.

Orihime Inoue. He knew something bad was about to happen.

His heart beat and as his eyes locked onto where hers waited to turn, expecting them to turn – when is she going to turn? as she moved, motionless – he started drifting around, over himself, around himself…

Orihime looked and he snapped around, away from her look, his heartbeat knocking the wind out of him as he realized he was dreaming and began counting the seconds until he would wake up.

He stared into his own face. He was alone in a glistening white desert like an eroded moon, with himself, staring into the mirror-wall of the air.

It was not himself. It was himself. His face was white, precisely defined, sharpness of moon-marble. His eyes were black, a gold iris floating in the void. A snake tongue flickered between fangs.

"Hello," it said.

***************

He didn't wake up.

Orihime saw him start as if he was waking. Did his eyes open? Did he scream silently? They closed again. He fell back into his position, gasping, then settled down, until his breathing was impossible to hear, until he slept so deeply he seemed dead, and she briefly shook his body to disrupt his sightless dreams.

She touched his face and it was cold. She disappeared from where he lay, into a street of screeching sightless cars and dark-light midsummer puddles, where a dark rain slowly let fall strained last tears.


	2. 02 Luis: soulz soulz paranoia

Ichigo didn't remember the dream that day.

He had remembered the first one. On April 19th. The night before his date. He had dreamed it was the hollow going, not him. The hollow slurping at his plate, throwing it to the ground. "Souls, souls," the hollow called to the waiter. It was like a comedy sketch. Some sort of parody. Like the funny zombie, going "brainz…" but Orihime was crying… she cried all over her napkin. Her face sank into it. Her tears leached it clear. Her face fell straight through and it stuck all over her, white clinging pieces… as she kept crying, head rising and falling…

He hadn't gone on that first date. Mizuiro and Keigo bombarded his cellphone and he threw it at the wall. He threw it at his closet. If Rukia had been there, she probably would have caught it, said something funny. It slid down near Kon. God knows what Kon texted back to them.

She should have gone home, she shouldn't have. What the hell kept her on that park bench half the night?

Hollows tore at his waking dreams. He thought there was something outside the house. He went into his soul form several times. Leaving his body slumped just the way it had been. The third time he stood out there. In his driveway. He looked around at the night. There was nothing. He wanted there to be something. Something for him to do. Something to be there with him. He didn't want to be alone. Even Isshin back inside was snoring. He could hear it out here. _Isshin._

What kept her on that park bench all night?

How did he know where to find her? He didn't use any spirit threads.

His spirit eyes were blind. Blind with white.

He found her. She looked up at him. It was past midnight. Or something. It smelled a bit like rain.

She held him. No-one saw anyone with her. She was alone on the park bench for the rest of the night. No-one was there at her house to yell at her for being late.

They could have done so many things. It was too late for that. Ichigo fell asleep in a minute, after a few casual words, after no explanations, no tears.

He dreamed the same dream, but kept himself from remembering it.

She bent over his sleeping face, for the second time in her life.


End file.
